


past simple (present simple)

by Jothowrote



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Ancient Rome Sidequest AU, Gen, Grizzop lives!, RQG Exchange 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:00:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23837965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jothowrote/pseuds/Jothowrote
Summary: Sasha screamed out to Apophis.And Apophis heard her.Ancient Rome Sidequest AU.
Relationships: Grizzop drik Acht Amsterdam & Sasha Racket
Comments: 10
Kudos: 77
Collections: Rusty Quill Gaming Exchange 2020





	past simple (present simple)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [buzzbuzz34](https://archiveofourown.org/users/buzzbuzz34/gifts).



> For buzzbuzz34 – this isn’t exactly what you asked for, but I hope this is something close to what you wanted! Grizzop lives AU for the RQG Exchange.

The last dragon that crawled its way out of the pit was much smaller than the others, and shone brass in the light from the open roof. Sasha screamed out from where she was tied, desperate enough for one last try.

‘Apophis!’ 

Maybe there had been a lull in the wind; maybe, for a split second, all the other sounds of the terrorized city had died down just enough for the sound of her voice to reach Apophis.

The dragon paused, perched on the edge of the pit, and then slowly their huge brass head – smaller than the others and obviously juvenile, yet still orders of magnitude larger than Sasha – swung slowly towards her.

Sasha swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. Burning orange eyes stared into hers. She could hear Cicero whimpering beside her. The noise and clamour from the other dragons escaping their prison was dying down now, and Apophis was standing in front of her with almost an expectant look in their eyes.

‘Apophis,’ she said again, her voice cracking from the strain of shouting. ‘Apophis, I need your help.’

 _And why should I help you?_ they asked. 

‘I met you in the future,’ Sasha gasped, panic settling in now. But she could see Grizzop’s body from where she was tied, looking small and crumpled. If there was any hope, it lay in Apophis. ‘I know you. One of my best friends, he… he’s your descendent.’

Apophis continued to stare.

 _You are not lying_ they said, eventually, after a ponderous (and for Sasha, terrifying) silence. Even Cicero had stopped whimpering. _But this does not answer my question. Why should I help you?_

‘I’m not Roman,’ Sasha says, ‘neither is my friend. We’re here by accident – we fell through time, I think, and ended up here, and now Grizzop…. He’s…’

 _You were fighting to free us?_ Apophis asked, their head tilting in a manner not unlike a curious dog. 

‘My friend killed the captain before he was taken down by the others,’ Sasha said. ‘They would have controlled you. He made it so you could be free. Please,’ she begged, ‘for his sake.’

Apophis’s burning eyes look unmoved, and Sasha struggled in her bondings. It turned out that the knots and rope were poorly and hastily done and she freed herself quickly, dropping catlike onto the ground below. She checked quickly in her clothes – they hadn’t taken away her daggers, a rookie mistake. She turned to cut Cicero loose, though it didn’t stop his constant whimpering. Apophis watched it all impassively.

With Cicero freed, and the sound of chaos in Rome echoing distantly down into the cavern, Sasha realised she had very little to lose. Apophis was here; they would either listen or not. She was thousands of years in her past – technically she was already dead. And Grizzop…

She hurried down to where his small body lay. He weighed hardly anything at all as she scooped him up and held him in her lap – his face looked peaceful, though his clothes and armour were soaked in blood. She held him tight and couldn’t hold in the scream of pain and rage and fear that bubbled out from her chest, scraping her throat as it left her.

Apophis’ head swung to look at her and Grizzop’s body. Cicero stood where she had left him, quivering.

‘Please,’ she begged, staring up into those inhuman orange eyes. ‘Please. He stopped you from just going under the control of the Cult of Mars. You’re free because of him.’

Apophis stared some more.

‘I can’t do this on my own,’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t be here by myself.’ She held Grizzop’s tiny body tightly and prayed to Artemis, to Aphrodite, to anyone who would listen. _Please_ , she prayed.

Apophis’ voice resonated in her mind once more.

 _I know where you need to go_ , they say. _You will have to ride on my back – can you hold on?_

And – miracle of miracles – the dragon bent their forelegs and stretched out their neck, offering an easy way to climb onto their back.

Sasha froze for an instant; then she sprang into action.

First she dug through Grizzop’s bag for healing potions; after forcing one down Cicero’s throat, she downed one herself, and then half carried, half pushed Cicero up onto Apophis’ back. Cicero was still and shaky and more unwieldly than Grizzop’s small corpse, but she managed to eventually get him situated before climbing on herself with Grizzop in her arms. Then, carefully, she tied both Grizzop and Cicero to herself, and held on tight.

‘I’m ready,’ she said.

Beneath her, hard scales rippled as the muscles beneath them bunched and tensed. Apophis’ head came up, and their wings snapped open. With two powerful beats of the huge brass wings they were out from underground and up into the air above Rome. Sasha avoided looking down at the destruction below, and instead focused on holding to both Apophis and her two charges.

‘It’ll be okay,’ she whispered, though she was talking to herself; Cicero was sat behind her, now gibbering in fear, and Grizzop could hear nothing at all. ‘It’ll all be okay.’

The wind was cold and loud, so high in the air, as Apophis took them far above Rome with strong, steady wingbeats. It bit at Sasha’s face and stung her eyes, making her wish for her goggles. But to reach into her bag to get the goggles she would have to let go of the hold she had Grizzop, and she couldn’t do that. Luckily Apophis’ scales were so warm to the touch that the freezing wind was not too difficult to deal with. Sasha lost track of time – the soothing rhythm of Apophis’ wings and the tension in her grip made the seconds slide to minutes slide to hours, and when she looked down there were no clouds and the sea sparkled like a sapphire far below them.

She remembered the first time she ever saw the sea, in Dover, during the storm. But thinking of Dover made her think of Zolf – Zolf who she would never see again. Thinking of Zolf made her think of Hamid, and then Hamid led to Azu, and then… she held Grizzop tighter in her arms.

‘Where are we going?’ she called out, over the roaring wind.

 _Greece_ , Apophis replied. _A temple, where they can resurrect the newly dead. There should still be time_.

Sasha held Grizzop closer still, closed her streaming eyes, and waited for the journey to be done.

The sea beneath them turned to cliffs, and then to rocky landscapes patched with green. Apophis landed rather heavily in a grove of gnarled trees, their wings sending dirt and dust up in a cloud around them. Sasha slid off his back and laid Grizzop gently on the dusty ground, before climbing up and prising Cicero off too.

‘Uh, thanks, and all that, but…’ Sasha said, looking up in Apophis’ orange eyes. ‘Uh… what now?’

Apophis snorted – a big gout of smoke billowed from his nostrils. If Sasha didn’t know better, she would have said it sounded like a chuckle.

 _There is a temple of healing, in the city_. Apophis lifted their large head and swung it towards the coast. _I remember… we were here before, once. The temple was left standing to tend to the wounded._

‘You’re not coming with us?’ Sasha asked. More smoke issued from the large brass nostrils.

 _I do not think they would be pleased to see me_ , Apophis said. _After the last time we were here, under orders from the Romans – they would likely run away._

‘Ah, right.’ Sasha nodded. ‘Good, uh, good point. You’ll… what will you do?’

 _I must re-join the others_ , Apophis said, settling heavily down onto the dusty floor, tail whipping around to curl across their legs. Their large brass head came to rest on their forelegs, their great orange eyes blinking ponderously at Sasha. Their snout was so close to her face that she could smell nothing but hot brimstone smoke. Scales lightly brushed her forehead – it felt like a benediction, or a blessing.

 _I hope you can save your friend_ , Apophis said.

‘Yeah. Me too.’

Sasha picked up her bag, and Grizzop’s, before scooping up his limp body once more.

‘Thanks,’ she said, again.

Apophis just blinked.

‘Come on,’ she said, tugging at Cicero’s arm, and slowly they made their way out of the sheltered grove of trees and onto the side of the small mountain.

Halfway down, and the distant sounds of wingbeats made Sasha look up. A shining brass shape was already up towards the clouds and growing smaller by the second, moving much faster than before. Apophis was heading back to Rome. Sasha watched the dragon’s scales catch the sunlight before becoming too small to see before turning back towards the path.

It was a long walk down to the city.

The city at the base of the mountain was in a state of disrepair, though clearly used to be rich and prosperous. Many of the houses at the outer edge were makeshift shelters and prop-ups, full to bursting with sheltering refugees, though the further in they got, the grander the architecture became. Most of the stone buildings were demolished in part, though construction was already ongoing to fix them. No one took any notice of Sasha or Cicero – they blended in perfectly with the others around, shabbily dressed and pale-faced, dusty and weary. Most of the people were speaking a language Sasha couldn’t understood, most likely Greek, though there were snatches of Latin here and there. 

Ahead of them the crowds began to part hurriedly – Sasha didn’t know where they were and couldn’t understand the mutterings of the crowd, but she knew body language and she knew how people acted around those with power.

‘Quick,’ she hissed, tugging on Cicero’s arm. ‘This way.’  
She ducked behind a sheet of canvas that was flapping gently in the breeze, pulling Cicero in behind her, her other arm tight on Grizzop’s limp form. 

Two guards were marching down the street, dressed in the same uniforms Sasha remembered from Rome. She couldn’t tell which god they served, or even if they served a particular god at all, but the way the rest of the crowd shied away from the guards suggested that they were not afraid to exercise their full power to lay down the law.

Sasha waited until the sounds of their armour were eventually covered by the susurration of the crowd before continuing.

‘C’mon,’ she muttered, tugging on Cicero’s arm again to get him going.

There were more Roman guards patrolling the streets further on, obviously still unaware of Rome’s fate. Sasha kept to the side-lines and to the thickest parts of the crowd. The guards were avoided by the people, and as long as Sasha and Cicero kept their heads down, the guards didn’t seem to care about them. They blended in well enough with the other dirty, hopeless-looking people.

‘I think we’re in Greece, somewhere,’ Cicero piped up, as they walked through the shanty town towards the centre of the city. It was the first time he had spoken since Sasha had woken up.

‘Oh, yeah? That’s good; Apophis said it was Greece,’ Sasha said. She didn’t want to spook him, but he subsided back into silence once more. It was better than the whimpering, at any rate.

‘The temple,’ Sasha said, as they made it to what looked like the city centre. Most of the buildings were destroyed or being rebuilt, but one stood untouched. ‘Apophis said they left it standing.’

Even better – it was a temple of Aphrodite. The iconography was not so different to what Azu wore, in the distant future, and for the first time since waking Sasha felt a small spark of hope in her chest. The marble steps were bustling with people – mainly those who looked ill and old, hobbling up and down, though there were the occasional pink-clad figures hurrying from person to person. Sasha shifted from foot to foot, suddenly unsure.

‘Do we just… walk in?’ she asked Cicero, not really expecting a reply.

To her surprise, Cicero shrugged. 

‘Not many other options,’ he said.

‘Right.’ Sasha took a breath, adjusted Grizzop on her shoulder, and began to sidle up the steps.

She thought she was being relatively sneaky, but she barely got halfway to the main doors before being accosted by a human woman in pink robes. The woman said something in a language that Sasha didn’t understand. She sounded harried and looked exhausted.

‘Sorry,’ Sasha said, ‘uh. Do you speak Latin?’

‘Latin? Yes,’ the woman said curtly. ‘Welcome to the temple of Aphrodite Urania. What’s your illness? I have to warn you, we’re very busy – if it isn’t an emergency then I’m afraid you’ll have to come back another da-‘

‘My friend is dead,’ Sasha said, curtly, inclining her head to the shoulder she’d draped Grizzop over. 

The woman blinked rapidly, her mouth open.

‘I… see,’ she said. For a moment her face went blank. It looked as though she were running through a mental checklist of responses before she spoke again. ‘You… understand that resurrections are expensive?’

Sasha realised she probably wasn’t making the best impression – her clothes were dirty and torn, her face dusty from the grove and grimy with old blood, not all of it hers. 

‘I have money,’ she said, shortly. She reached into her bag of holding and pulled out a full purse. ‘I’ve got this – and more. Please.’

The woman blinked again at the bulging coin purse. Sasha was impressed at her poker face.

‘Right. Well, come with me,’ she said, her clipped tone suddenly all business, and she led Sasha and Cicero through the massing crowds and into the temple proper.

It was much quieter inside – the air was cool and the marble shone bright white and clean, shot through with pink strands. Pink-robed healers fluttered daintily from patient to patient with a gentle, caring air.

‘Resurrections are rare,’ the woman said, as she led them through the main atrium and up a wide staircase. ‘You’re lucky you came here – very few places in Athens can perform them anymore. Rome restricts the practice.’

‘Athens,’ Cicero said. ‘Of course.’

The woman glanced at him but was clearly too professional to show any confusion.

She led them up more flights of stairs until they came to a fancy waiting room, clearly meant for the more discerning of patient. There was more of the marbled pink flooring and the furniture was gilded. 

‘Right,’ said the woman, as they reached a desk with an attractive, bored-looking man sat behind it. Receptionists, Sasha was strangely comforted to find, were much the same in the past as they were in the future. ‘Adonis will sort out your payment, and I’ll take the patient through to get started on the ritual.’

Silently, more pink-robed healers had gathered beside them with a stretcher. Sasha clutched Grizzop to her closely, suddenly loathe to let him go.

‘Can’t I go with him?’ she asked.

‘I’m afraid only healers are allowed to be present,’ the woman said, firmly.

Sasha tightened her grip.

‘He’s a bit… odd looking,’ she said, hastily. ‘But he’s not… not dangerous, or anything.’

‘Quite frankly, I’ve seen stranger,’ the woman sighed, with a pointed look at Sasha that said if she were any less professional, she would be rolling her eyes. ‘You’d be surprised at how many rich people come here to get their pets resurrected.’

‘He’s not a _pet_ ,’ Sasha spat, squeezing his body again. If he had been alive, Grizzop probably would have suffocated.

‘Of course not. Look,’ said the woman, and her voice was gentler. ‘We can help him. You just need to let us.’

Sasha cradled Grizzop’s body in her arms, looking down at his closed eyes and his grey skin. He looked strangely peaceful.

‘Okay,’ she said, taking a deep breath. ‘Okay.’

She laid his body gently down on the stretcher, arranging his arms so he would be more comfortable and untucking an ear from where it got bent against the fabric. The moment she drew back the stretcher was whisked away.

‘He’ll be back with you soon,’ said the woman, gently touching Sasha’s arm. It just went to show how out of sorts Sasha was that she didn’t recoil from the contact.

The rest of the day passed in a blur. Sasha vaguely remembered handing over almost all the gold she and Grizzop had been carrying in their bags to the grumpy receptionist. She spent most of her time sitting in one of the plush, gilded chairs, knees drawn up to her chin. She listened vaguely to a conversation between Cicero and the receptionist that took place half in Latin, half in Greek.

‘Adonis? Really?’

‘It’s a common enough name,’ the receptionist sniffed.

Smatterings of Greek chatter around the room washed over Sasha like water. At some point, someone brought her some sweet pastries and a cup of weak wine. She ate and drank mechanically. Cicero fell asleep in the chair beside her and punctuated the background noise with his rasping snores. She thought about the dragons, rising up into the sky only to rain destruction down on the city that had held them captive. She thought about the Cult of Mars. She thought about Apophis. Then she stopped, because that made her think of Hamid, and that led to thoughts that hurt.

She tried to think about nothing at all.

Finally, after an indeterminate amount of time, the first woman in pink returned and stood next to Sasha’s chair, announcing her presence with a quiet cough.

‘Yes?’ Sasha said, immediately standing up. ‘Are they done? Is he…’

‘He’s alive,’ the woman said, with a smile. ‘He’s in the recovery ward. And he’s asking for you.’

Sasha ran.

Grizzop was sitting up in a bed with white sheets, looking very out of place and small, his eyes bright and alert. His voice was raised – he appeared to be arguing with a harried looking healer. When Sasha paused in the doorway, drinking in the sight of him alive and vital, he looked up and gave her a toothy grin.

‘You made it out, then?’ he asked.

A noise erupted unbidden from Sasha’s throat, half sob, half laugh.

‘Yeah,’ she said, thickly. ‘Yeah, I did. Thanks to you.’

*

‘What was it like?’ she asked, later, as they left the temple and went looking for somewhere to stay for the night. They still had some money left over, despite the expensive resurrection, and Sasha was so tired her bones felt like lead. It had been a long few weeks, and after the intense excitement since the spell gone wrong, she was just about ready to sleep for a month. Grizzop, on the other hand, seemed to literally have a new lease of life. They’d wrapped him up in a cloak to stop anyone seeing his goblin features and jumping to any dangerous conclusions, and he was bounding around Sasha and Cicero like the child he was pretending to be.

‘Death?’ Grizzop asked. 

‘Yeah.’

Grizzop thought about it for a few seconds, slowing down to match her pace.

‘Peaceful,’ he decided. ‘I was… at peace.’

‘Oh.’ Sasha looked down at her feet. ‘I… should I have brought you back? Did you…’

She hadn’t considered the possibility that Grizzop might not have wanted to return to life.

‘No; it’s okay,’ Grizzop said, reaching up and uncharacteristically taking her hand. ‘I was peaceful… but then. Then I saw… I saw her. Artemis. And she told me I wasn’t done.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘I’ve got to make sure you don’t get into trouble down here.’

Sasha felt like crying again.

‘Is this guy going to keep hanging around?’ Grizzop stage-whispered, jerking a thumb at Cicero, who looked like he was asleep on his feet. It had taken a long time to wake him up at the temple, and even then he had staggered out after them like a sleepwalker.

‘Yeah, I think so,’ Sasha said. 

‘Okay.’ Grizzop shrugged. ‘So what are we going to do now?’

‘I need to sleep,’ Sasha said.

‘And after that?’

‘We should probably get out of here, before the meritocrats get done with Rome and let everywhere else know that they’re in charge now,’ Sasha said, looking around at the city. The closer to the centre, the more Roman guards stood around, though none of them were paying any particular attention to the crowds.

‘Yeah, good point. Hey, lucky they still do resurrections, right?’ Grizzop said, with a sharp grin. ‘Pre-meritocratic life in seems to have some perks.’

Sasha just held his hand tighter.

‘I know where we can go,’ Cicero piped up from behind them. ‘I know a place – it’s out of the way, and we can stay awhile.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ Sasha asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘Well then,’ she said, ‘we’ll go there. But first, I need to sleep.’

*

Two years later and Sasha was up late, unable to sleep. Sometimes her mind wouldn’t quiet – thoughts of the future and everything they had left behind swirled around and around in her head until she was dizzy with them. When she felt like that, she knew that sleep wasn’t an option.

Grizzop would occasionally sit up with her until the early hours, each of them keeping the other company. But he was off on one of his hunting trips and wasn’t yet back. Cicero would sometimes help distract her with teaching her to read and write Greek, but she could hear his rasping snores from his room and she didn’t want to wake him.

Sasha wandered the large farmhouse in the dark and let her thoughts run wild.

Night wasn’t quiet in the country. It had been one of the first things Sasha had learnt after Cicero had brought them to the abandoned farmhouse. Her whole life up to joining the mercenary group had spent in London and Other London, listening to the sounds of the city at night, and somehow the country was noisier. Screeches and squawks and rustlings kept her awake almost as often as her thoughts, though she was getting used to it now.

She didn’t have a choice except to get used to it.

Her night-time wanderings always ended up in the same place – on the roof. There, perched on a corner, she could see out across the rolling hills and the forests, and she could watch the sun come up from the east. This night was no different; she took her usual place and waited for sunrise.

But as the sun rose, it highlighted something new. There was a small figure standing near the barn, staring at the farmhouse. It was small – larger than Grizzop, smaller than Sasha – but slender, and as the sun began to rise it glowed golden brown on his skin. Something fizzed in her chest, excitement so strong it rose like nausea. 

‘Hamid?’ Sasha whispered. 

The figure turned, and she could see more clearly the halfling shape, the Egyptian colouring, the dark coiffed hair and handsome profile.

‘Hamid!’ she cried, leaping to her feet and running to the edge of the roof. She slid down the side of the building with ease of skill and practice and ran flat-out to where the halfling stood.

‘Hamid, you’re here!’ she called as she ran.

Then Hamid turned, and Sasha faltered as the sunrise fell on his face. He was a halfling, but his face was a stranger and his eyes were a burning orange.

‘Oh,’ Sasha said, staggering to a stop. ‘Oh, I…’

‘Hamid,’ said Apophis, rolling the name around in his mouth. ‘My descendent, yes? The one you know in the future?’

‘Uh, yeah,’ Sasha said, suddenly overcome with shyness. ‘Sorry, I… you looked like…’

She petered out, but Apophis said nothing. Instead he looked around at the farm and the hills.

‘You’ve settled here?’ he asked.

‘Yeah,’ Sasha said. She shrugged. ‘It’s alright.’

‘I…’ Apophis looked, if anything, a little awkward. If he had been a real halfling, Sasha bet he would have been wringing his hands. ‘I wanted to see… how you were doing. Your friend…’

‘He’s alive, yeah,’ Sasha said. ‘Thanks for that, by the way.’

‘We’ve banned resurrections,’ Apophis said, sounding almost apologetic. ‘I wanted to make sure…’

‘Yeah.’

There was a strange sort of whiplash looking at this Apophis. Sasha remembered him from the future, so powerful and assured of his own power. As a dragon, he had felt unearthly. Here, in this halfling form, he looked like the juvenile he was, unsure of himself and his place in the world.

‘I don’t suppose you know if we could get back. To the future, I mean,’ Sasha said. 

To her surprise, Apophis shrugged. 

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and he sounded genuine. ‘The others… we’re banning all kinds of strong magic. We can’t risk being locked up again. That kind of power, to travel between planes and times… it won’t be allowed.’

‘I guess that makes sense,’ Sasha sighed. ‘It was a pretty long shot, to be honest.’

Apophis hummed.

‘The sunrise is nice, here,’ Sasha offered.

‘It is,’ he agreed.

They watched it in silence for a time, from the door to the barn. Sasha sat down on a nearby water bucket and offered one to Apophis, but he declined with a delicate shake of his head. 

‘So why did you come here?’ Sasha asked eventually, when the curiosity grew too great for her to quash. ‘Why did you come and find us?’

Apophis turned away from the view and the sunlight caught the angles of his face and shadowed his unearthly eyes; he suddenly looked painfully young, and uncannily like Hamid. Sasha’s chest hurt. She missed her friend.

‘I wanted to see if you saved the goblin,’ he said.

‘Grizzop,’ Sasha corrected sharply.

Apophis inclined his head.

‘Grizzop. And… and I wanted…’ He ended on a sigh.

‘A break?’ Sasha asked. She squinted into the morning sunshine and then back at the young meritocrat. Apophis wasn’t a friend, not really – you couldn’t be friends with him any more than you could be friends with a storm – but he was friend-shaped. She looked at the drooping shoulders, the sad set of his mouth – he looked like Hamid in a depressive mood. She made a decision. ‘You, uh… you want any breakfast?’

‘I don’t really…’

‘Or a cuppa? Or something? Well, not a real one – turns out tea is a pretty recent thing, but there’s this weak wine stuff that Cicero likes and I suppose it’s okay to drink in the mornings sometimes.’

Sasha could feel herself babbling but couldn’t stop – suddenly, all she wanted was to cheer up Apophis. He looked like Hamid when Hamid was sad, and Hamid was probably sad right now, in the future. Sasha couldn’t help Hamid, but she could help the next best thing.

‘Yes,’ Apophis said, and he sounded almost surprised at his own words. ‘Yes, I… I wouldn’t mind that.’

Grizzop arrived back from his hunt at lunchtime, carrying a brace of birds over his shoulder and wearing a sharp, satisfied grin. He didn’t seem phased in any way by the sight of Apophis in halfling form sitting at the table, a cup of wine untouched in front of him.

‘How’d it go?’ Sasha asked. Grizzop just dumped his haul on the table as an answer and smiled with all his sharp teeth.

‘Got bored of razing Rome to the ground?’ he asked Apophis.

Sasha blanched; Apophis seemed stunned silent. Apparently after dying once, Grizzop had lost both fear and tact – although, to be honest, tact had never been his strongest suit.

‘He didn’t mean…‘ Sasha began, in an attempt to salvage the situation and try to avoid being immolated by a meritocrat. 

‘Yes,’ Apophis said, softly. ‘I was.’

‘Hmm.’ Grizzop folded his arms and frowned at Apophis. Bright red met burning orange, and Sasha stopped breathing.

‘I’m glad to see you are well,’ Apophis said eventually, stiffly.

‘Yeah. Thanks to you,’ Grizzop admitted grudgingly. They broke off their stares, and Sasha let out a small sigh of relief.

Cicero walked into the kitchen at that very moment, nose in a scroll, oblivious to the atmosphere.

‘Any bread left?’ he asked vaguely. Sasha coughed meaningfully.

Cicero looked up and saw the meritocrat with burning orange eyes sitting neatly at the kitchen table, surrounded by a brace of dead birds. He went pale, turned on his heel, and immediately left the room.

Apophis frowned.

‘Was that my fault?’

‘Ah, that’s just Cicero,’ Sasha said, waving a hand dismissively. ‘Don’t worry about him.’

*

It was on Apophis’ third visit that Grizzop came up with the idea of the letter.

‘If we write it to them now, then it doesn’t matter if they don’t get it until the future, because they can time travel back to any point, right?’ he said, stabbing a thin finger down onto the table to emphasize his point. ‘That’s how time travel works.’

‘ _If_ time travel works,’ Sasha pointed out. ‘We did it by accident. How do we know that it can be done on purpose?’

‘Well, we don’t,’ Grizzop shrugged, ‘but it’s worth a try. And at the very least, they’ll know that we’re okay here. That we didn’t fall into some kind of hell dimension.’

‘Or a screaming poo fire dimension,’ Sasha mused to herself fondly.

‘Uh, yeah, sure.’ Grizzop shooting her a weird look. ‘But it’s worth a try, right?’

‘How would they get it?’ Sasha asked. ‘It’s not like we can write down address but say not to deliver for a thousand years!’

‘I could… look after the letter,’ Apophis offered. ‘For your friend, my descendent. I could keep one for them, I mean. For the future.’

Sasha stared at him.

‘Why?’

‘You helped us,’ Apophis shrugged. ‘And they’re my family. Or at least, they will be.’ He gave a sigh. ‘I imagined what that would be like, when we were slaves. A family.’

‘You had the other dragons,’ Sasha said.

‘Yes.’ Apophis smiled wryly. ‘But I was the child. The young one. I’ve always wanted young ones of my own.’

‘Well, you need to have ‘em,’ Sasha said, ‘because Hamid needs to exist. He’s great, Hamid. You’ll like ‘im. He’s super powerful too. Good with fire.’

‘You’ll… if we write a letter, you’ll give it to him?’ Grizzop asked.

‘I will,’ Apophis agreed.

‘Well, you can’t give it to him straight away,’ Sasha said thoughtfully. ‘Because I was with him when you met him the first time – when you will meet him for the first time, I mean. And when you…’ She faltered, tripping up over her tenses. ‘You should wait. The world is in a pretty bad place in the future, when I left. You should probably wait until that’s all over and finished before you give it to him. I don’t want to distract him.’

‘I will,’ Apophis said again.

‘Right. Okay.’ Sasha rubbed her hands on her trousers. ‘Right. That’s sorted, then.’

‘You still need to write the letter,’ Apophis reminded, a twinkle in his burning orange eyes. 

That was easier said than done.

Sasha took charge of the actual writing, though Grizzop hovered over her shoulder the entire time and offered a lot what he considered constructive criticism.

‘I’m not telling them you died!’

‘Why not? I’m better now.’

‘It’ll just make them upset.’

‘But I’m fine! And it adds flavour.’

Sasha had her tongue out in concentration as she wrote.

‘What should we tell them about Rome, and the meritocrats?’

‘Everything,’ Grizzop said, in a ‘duh’ kind of tone.

‘Yeah, but… I don’t think that will go down too well with the messenger,’ Sasha whispered, even though Apophis had flown back to the meritocrats after realising that the whole letter-writing affair would take some time.

‘Well, tough,’ Grizzop said. ‘They should know what we found out, in case we can’t get back. Makes it feel worthwhile, then.’

‘Yeah.’ Sasha paused for a few seconds, chewing the end of the quill thoughtfully – Cicero hated it when she did that – before scrawling down another sentence.

‘Ooh, say hello to Vesseek for me!’

‘Okay.’ Sasha scribbled out some more. ‘I’ll write down where we are in case they can come and get us. What else?’

It took them several days before they were both happy with the letter. It turned mainly into a goodbye, a chance to tell Azu and Hamid not to worry. Sasha ummed and ahhed for a long time before adding a postscript telling Hamid to let Zolf know she was okay. She knew Zolf would worry too. 

‘I think it’s done,’ she said, finally, sitting back to admire her handiwork. It was a bit messy – she wasn’t great at using the quill and ink, and Grizzop had at points wrested the quill from her grasp to add his own parts, but it was clear enough. And it said all the important things.

Sasha looked up to Grizzop to get his approval, but he was curled catlike in an armchair, fast asleep.

When Apophis next came to visit, Sasha handed over the letter. Cicero had shown her how to seal it with wax, in an attempt to stop the meritocrat from reading it – not that some flimsy wax would do much to stop a dragon. But Sasha was surprised to find she trusted Apophis.

‘Here,’ she said, holding it out. ‘For Hamid and Azu.’

‘I’ll make sure they get it,’ Apophis said gravely.

As he took the letter, Sasha felt a weight fall from her shoulders, as though she’d been carrying chains around. She felt lighter, freer, somehow, relieved that her friends would not think her and Grizzop lost in the void. 

‘Thanks,’ Sasha said, before turning back to the farmhouse, and her new life.

*

coda

After it’s all over, and the world is settling down into some kind of new normalcy, Saira sends Hamid a curt message.

He relays it to Zolf and Azu in a panic, hands in his hair.

‘Apophis wants to see me,’ he says, pacing frantically. ‘Why now? Have I done something? I don’t-‘

‘It could just be a family visit,’ Azu offers.

Hamid shoots her a look.

‘It feels very official,’ he says. ‘It feels… I feel like I’m in trouble, somehow.’

‘You helped save the world,’ Zolf points out. ‘And didn’t you say that Saira mentioned Azu as well?’

‘Yeah,’ Hamid says. ‘Yeah, maybe it’s nothing.’

They call Einstein for a lift, because saving the world gets you some perks, and those include not having to travel the slow way. They arrive in Cairo the same day Saira sends the message – Zolf had been leery of coming since he was not specifically invited and is very aware of his family’s anti-meritocratic beliefs, but after everything Hamid has been through he doesn’t like being parted from Zolf and Azu for long, so he encourages Zolf to come anyway.

‘What Apophis has to say to me and Azu, he can say to you too,’ Hamid argues, ‘and anyway, you weren’t ever a _real_ harlequin.’

Zolf takes off his ring before they leave just in case.

Cairo is dry and hot – the weather has gone back to normal, now – and Einstein is happy to see them and as chatty as ever. Saira meets them outside of Apophis’ chambers, her face serious.

‘Do you know what this is about?’ she asks Hamid as they enter. Hamid frowns at her.

‘I was hoping you would,’ he says. 

Saira looks to Azu, who shrugs. She glances at Zolf, who looks supremely uncomfortable.

‘Well, you better go in,’ she says, shrugging. ‘He’s waiting for you.’

Apophis is, indeed, waiting. He is wearing what might be called a smile, and if Hamid didn’t know any better, he would say that Apophis looks almost… excited.

‘Ah, Hamid. Azu. You brought Zolf, too, I see. Perfect.’

Zolf shifts his metal legs awkwardly.

‘You wanted to see us?’ Hamid asks, cutting to the chase.

‘Yes. Or rather, I have something to give to you.’ Apophis smiles and holds out an old piece of parchment – so old, in fact, it looks ready to fall apart.

‘What’s this?’ Hamid asks, taking it delicately, a little worried that if he breathes on it wrong it might disintegrate. He examines the ancient wax seal. It’s cracked and faded but still holding the parchment shut.

‘A letter,’ Apophis says. ‘From some old friends.’

It’s addressed to Hamid first, though Azu’s name is there too, so Azu hovers over Hamid’s shoulder as he carefully cracks the seal open and unfurls the parchment while Zolf hangs back looking uncomfortable, trying to avoid Apophis’ burning orange gaze.

The first surprise is that it is written in English. Then Hamid reads the first line, and is hit by the second surprise.

‘It’s from Sasha!’ he cries.

‘What?’ Zolf hurries forward, any nervousness around Apophis forgotten as he cranes to see the note from Hamid’s other side.

The letter itself isn’t that long; it is written in a hand clearly unaccustomed to calligraphy with a quill, and there are multiple smudges of ink. In some places the handwriting changes entirely. But it’s clearly Sasha, and occasionally Grizzop, speaking to them from across a thousand years of history.

‘They’re alive,’ Hamid says, tears flowing freely from his eyes. Azu sniffs loudly beside him and puts a large, comforting hand on his shoulder – on his other side, Zolf wraps an arm around him. ‘They’re safe and they’re together.’

‘And now we know where and when they are,’ Azu says, her voice strong despite her tears. ‘We can get them back.’

‘We can try,’ Zolf amends. ‘It might not be possible.’

‘No,’ Hamid says, ‘probably not. But now there’s hope.’

*


End file.
